This is sad news.

Zitat

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I'm saddened to write of the death of libertarian economist Walter E. Williams. He passed away Wednesday morning at the age of 84, less than a day after teaching a class at George Mason University, where he worked for 40 years and helped transform his department into a highly respected center of free market scholars. A popular syndicated columnist whose work appeared in over a hundred newspapers on a weekly basis, he was a long-time contributor to Reason and served as an emeritus trustee of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.

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Williams had a great flair for the apocalyptic. In his columns and during stints guest-hosting for Rush Limbaugh, he would often argue that America had irrevocably lost its way, especially when it came to defending the economic freedom that he believed was essential to rising living standards. If his rhetoric ran hot, he nevertheless asked questions that are well worth considering a decade after the Great Recession and in the midst of a medically induced economic coma.

"Are we so arrogant…to think that we are different from other people around the world?… How different are we from the Romans, who went down the tubes, or the British, or the French, or the Spanish, or the Portuguese? These are great empires of the past, but they went down the tubes for roughly the same things that we're doing. Liberty is the rare state of affairs in mankind's history, arbitrary abuse and control by others is the standard dish even now. All the tendencies are for us to have greater and greater amounts of our liberty usurped by government."

If we are not as far down the road to serfdom as he feared, it's in good part due to his voluminous writings and appearances which were by turns impassioned, funny, insightful, and memorable as hell. Walter E. Williams, rest in peace.

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https://reason.com/2020/12/02/i-just-do-...r-williams-rip/

Williams and Sowell, 2 of the great heroes of the modern intellectual age. He will be missed.